Numerical simulation of the temperature distribution of coffee stored in cooled and natural environments

Abstract

The storage of agricultural products is of great importance in maintaining product quality between harvest and commercialization. The use of numerical and computational techniques, such as the finite element method (FEM) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD), allows the analysis and simulation of systems that involve heat transfer, as is the case of grain storage. A computational model based on these techniques that satisfactorily represents a real system was used to test and to analyze decision alternatives without the need for real experimentation. In this study, we sought to study the behavior of the temperature of a mass of stored mocha coffee beans by using computational techniques, as requested by the private sector. The coffee was stored for 6 months in two types of environments: a cooled environment between 15 and 18 °C by using an air temperature control equipment used for artificial cooling and a natural environment. A computational model was developed to simulate the heat transfer process for both types of storage. In the comparison of the temperature distribution during storage from simulation results and for experimental results, an overall mean relative error of 2.34% was obtained for coffee stored in a natural environment, and that of 5.74% was obtained for coffee stored in a cooled environment.